The Long Walk

by Jill Cox

  I pulled into the Sherwood Home Depot parking lot and willed my rational brain to take charge. Despite the fact that he’d just dumped me, the idiot I loved most in the world was graduating. And if losing Ian had taught me anything, it was that you shouldn’t miss out on the important stuff. Not if you could help it. So I texted my parents to let them know I’d be a few hours later than expected, then turned my wheels east in the direction of Portland.

  The clock in my car read a quarter past two when I pulled into the Highgate Coliseum parking lot. I hustled to the main entrance, which was guarded by a lanky young freshman with more freckles than I’d ever seen in my life (and that was saying a lot, considering the Irish girl blinking back at me every day in the mirror). Suddenly I recognized the kid – he was one of the new Sigma Phi Beta pledges.

  “Hello,” I waved. “We’ve met before. What’s your name again?”

  “Wilson,” he replied, lifting his fingers in a half-wave. “Wilson Eckhardt.”

  “Hey, Wilson. Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes, ma’am. You’re Meredith Sullivan. You live at the Treehouse.”

  “That’s right.” I flashed him my kindest smile. “Look, Wilson, one of your Sigma Phi brothers is graduating this afternoon. Pete Russell. Have you heard of him?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He straightened his spine, and I half-expected him to salute me. “Mr. Thomas just arrived three minutes ago, ma’am. He told me about Mr. Russell.”

  “Did he? Well, great. Did Mr. Thomas leave an extra ticket for me to join him?”

  “No, ma’am. He didn’t have a ticket. I just let him inside.”

  “Really?” I crossed my arms. “That was nice of you.”

  Wilson looked from side to side, then whispered, “Don’t tell anyone, okay? Mr. Thomas threatened to tell President Sutton if I didn’t obey him. He called it insubordination.”

  “Ah,” I nodded, biting my inner lip so I didn’t laugh. “Look, Wilson, I can see you’re not a rule-breaker. I can appreciate that. No one likes to get in trouble. But here’s the deal: Drew Sutton is my oldest friend on the planet, and Dan Thomas is my housemate.”

  “I know that, ma’am. So are Braden Hopkins and Ben Stroder. They made us move your things from the Château to the empty bedroom last August right after our first chapter meeting.”

  “Yes, they did!” I bit my lip to keep from laughing. “Thanks for your help, by the way.”

  “You’re welcome, ma’am.”

  I uncrossed my arms and smiled again. “The thing is, Wilson, my friends will be offended if you don’t help me out today, just like you helped Dan Thomas. In fact, I have a feeling that if I asked him nicely, President Sutton would be happy to increase your long list of pledge duties next semester. We don’t want that, do we?”

  “Sir, no sir. Er, ma’am.” Wilson bowed slightly and placed a hand on the door behind him. “Welcome, Miss Sullivan. You look lovely this afternoon.”

  I glanced down at my outfit. Still pathetic. “Do I need to add liar to my list of complaints?”

  “Uh… no, ma’am.” Wilson’s mouth curved into a thin line as he opened the door just wide enough for me to pass through.

  I spotted Dan right away, and as I descended the stairs quietly toward him, I scanned the audience for the rest of Pete’s crew. A hundred feet below us, on the first row of the balcony, sat Brooks Darby and a reedy young man, flanked on either side by two middle-aged couples. All glossy, all gorgeous.

  “Oh, hey,” Dan whispered as I slipped into the chair beside him. “Don’t you look like a ball of sunshine this afternoon?”

  “Yes, I decided to wear my bad mood on the outside today, just for funsies.” I pulled my feet onto the chair, hugging my knees to my chest. “Hey, by the way, thanks for the heads-up about our visitor this morning. So sweet and thoughtful of you.”

  “I’m sorry.” He took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “He threw me completely off my game this morning. Otherwise, I would never have run off to find you in person. Or maybe that was just an excuse so I didn’t rip his head off.”

  I winced. “You guys fought?”

  Dan’s only answer was an eye roll.

  “Lucky Pete – two epic battles on graduation day.” I took in his jeans-and-hoodie combo. “Is that why you’re sitting all the way back here? Pete didn’t invite you?”

  “Oh, he invited me. But then he explained why you left, and I hurled another round of four-letter word bombs at him. In the end, the graduate stormed off without giving me a time or a venue. Good thing I know how to find the school calendar on the website.”

  I smiled, then gestured at the stage. “Did I miss it? Has he already walked?”

  “You’re right on time. They just finished the M’s.”

  Not surprisingly, there were very few graduates at the mid-year ceremony, so when the R’s shuffled up to the right side of the stage, I knew exactly which black robed graduate was Pete. But despite his perfect posture and his almost regal gait, everything felt… off. As if some invisible burden pressed down on his shoulders.

  Peter. Beckett. Russell.

  Magna Cum Laude with Distinction in French.

  Recipient of the Beckett Scholarship to the Centre Lafayette in Paris, France.

  With each word the dean recited, Pete approached the other end of the stage like he was a robot completing his daily tasks.

  Diploma: check.

  Handshake: check.

  Pose for official photo with Provost What’s-His-Name: check.

  One of the professors in the diploma squad pulled Pete gently toward him by the shoulder, clapped him on the back, and then clapped him again for good measure. Pete nodded, smiled politely, and descended the stairs at the left end of the stage.

  It was finished.

  Pete’s posse stood collectively and cheered as he left the stage. The reedy guy shouted something incomprehensible in what I assumed was Mandarin just before high-fiving Brooks, like their favorite team had just won a championship.

  “That’s the Darbys and the Logans,” Dan said quietly into my ear, pointing toward the balcony. “They all grew up with Pete’s mom. Well, at least Vick Darby and Becky Logan did.”

  “Really?” I peered down at the two older couples. “I knew the Logans went to Stanford with the Russells, but I didn’t realize Becky grew up in Dunthorpe, too.”

  And I definitely didn’t know Vick Darby was Liz Russell’s childhood friend. Why didn’t Brooks tell me this summer? Maybe Pete wasn’t the only one who compartmentalized his life.

  I observed the older couples casting sidelong glances at one another. The Darbys and the Logans were the only family Pete had left in the world, and as I watched them watching Pete, an inexplicable ache crept into my chest. I couldn’t imagine myself twenty-five years from now watching Drew’s son graduating without him. The ripples of loss never stopped at the family’s borders, did they? They carried on and on, leaving everyone in their wake changed forever.

  Dan leaned in once again, pointing toward the right side of the group. “The dark-haired one is Brooks Darby. She helped Pete’s grandmother while she was sick.”

  “I know. I met her this summer.” Willing my features to remain neutral, I pointed over to the reedy guy with the Poindexter glasses. “Who’s that sitting beside her?”

  “Oh, that’s James Logan,” he explained. “He’s the reason Pete went to Shanghai.”

  “So he does exist. I kind of thought he was a unicorn. Or a narwhal.”

  “Same here. But we have James to thank for our matching mini-strokes this morning.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His blue eyes went dark. “According to Pete, James said he wasn’t allowed to stay another day at the Initiative unless he came home and tied up all of his loose ends first.”

  “Loose ends, huh? Is that what we are?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Well!” I huffed. “I guess there goes my donation to the Restoration Ini
tiative.”

  My eyes tracked Pete all the way back to his seat near the back row of graduates. He never once looked up into the bleachers, though the Darbys and Logans were still cheering and leaning over the first balcony fifty feet above him. No, he kept his eyes focused on some unseen target, his smile vague, and his head high.

  I watched Brooks for a moment as she observed him from afar and wondered why she’d been so nice to me that day I’d shown up at Gigi’s house last July. Because despite Dan’s generic description, I could see – now more than ever – that Brooks wasn’t just some neighbor girl.

  Even an idiot like me could see that Brooks Darby had an epic case of the Pete Russell feels. I’d recognize that rosy-cheeked wistful longing anywhere.

  Dan, who was counting the number of graduates left in the program, suddenly noticed my distraction. “You okay?”

  “No.” I nodded toward Pete, who was sitting so perfectly upright in his seat that his back muscles would be sore the next day. “I’m terrified. This self-destructive streak isn’t like him.”

  “Yes, it is.” Dan slipped his arm around my shoulder. “I’ve been waiting for him to ditch his life the whole time I’ve known him. The real miracle is that he finished college in three years.”

  I imagined myself crossing that stage in six months without Ian in the audience, and tears pricked at my eyes. If my mom and dad were gone too, there’s no way I’d have the courage to step inside the coliseum, much less walk the stage. Pete only had us. And that wasn’t enough.

  We watched silently as the alphabet ticked along from Angelique Todd to Brian Urquhart to Eric Vo. Time kept marching forward, didn’t it? For everyone else crossing that stage, today was a beginning, but for Pete? For us? It was the end.

  “Come on,” Dan whispered, squeezing my shoulder. “It’s getting late, and your mom didn’t want you driving home in the dark.”

  “I know. But shouldn’t we – I mean, don’t you think we should tell him congratulations or something?”

  Dan glanced down at Pete, still frozen in place like he was a hologram of himself. “Maybe,” he admitted. “But he did a pretty good job of pushing us both over the proverbial cliff today. I don’t think that was an accident.”

  I nodded my head and stood. Without a word, Dan followed me up the coliseum stairs and out the entrance. When we finally reached my car at the far end of the parking lot, I turned back to face Dan. “How certain are you about that cliff analogy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I played with the zipper on my messenger bag for a few seconds, then I slid it open, pulling out a copy of my short story. “Would this make a difference, for example?”

  Dan took the paper from my hand. “You want to give Pete your short story?”

  “I was thinking about it.”

  He flipped the pages, scanning the words he’d already read a few times in critique group. “I don’t know, Meredith. If you’d asked me yesterday, I would’ve said yes, but…”

  But that’s stage-five clinger behavior. My bro dumped you this morning, dude! And now you think you’ll win him back with five thousand words? Loser.

  “Oh,” I laughed to myself. “You’re right. Sorry, I guess I was thinking since I wrote this story about him…”

  I scanned Dan’s expression one last time. His eyes looked exactly the same as they had that day outside Hatley Hall back in August. Like he knew something I didn’t know. And for the first time in a really long time, I realized he probably did. Of all the people in Pete’s circle, Dan Thomas seemed to be the only person who could predict his behavior with near-perfect accuracy.

  I snatched my short story from Dan’s fingers. “Forget it,” I hissed, opening my car door and flinging both my bag and the short story over to the passenger seat. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Dan stood there awkwardly for a full minute, shifting his weight from side to side as though he was searching for the right thing to say. Then suddenly, he pulled me into a hug so like Ian’s that my breath caught in my throat.

  “Happy birthday, Meredith,” he said, squeezing me tight. “I hope this next trip around the sun brings you some well-deserved peace.”

  SEVENTEEN

  On Christmas Eve, I noticed I’d lost one particular follower on every one of my social media accounts. And when I called Dan the next day, he reported the exact same phenomenon on his end. So did Braden, Ben, and all three of the Addison girls.

  Pete Russell had tied up all of his loose ends. Just as James requested.

  After a wild and out-of-control New Year’s Eve curled up alone in my bed like a crybaby loser, I came down for breakfast the next morning to find my dad tapping away on his laptop with Mum looking over his shoulder, their voices hushed. This was hardly newsworthy; for my whole life, they’d kept their business to themselves. But this time, as soon as I stepped into the room, my dad slammed the laptop shut.

  “Good morning,” he said a little too cheerily. “How’s my favorite girl today?”

  “Um, fine? How are you?”

  “Grand!” Molly said, bobbing her head a bit too enthusiastically. “Did you know it snowed last night, love? Gorgeous, I tell you.”

  As I filled a mug with tea from the kettle, I glanced outside to find a slight dusting of snow in the backyard. I lifted my mug to my lips, eyeing my parents. “You guys are weird this morning.”

  My dad tutted, muttering under his breath something about Millennials, while my mom’s face shifted from its normal pale pink to bright fuchsia.

  As I crossed the handful of steps over to the table, I noticed that the photographs normally cluttering the wall behind my parents had disappeared without my noticing. How did that happen? I mean, yeah, I had spent most of my break working at Sullivan’s, but… really? Every photo was gone. Why hadn’t I noticed?

  I made a quick survey of the rest of the kitchen. The tea kettle remained in its usual spot, but the counters were unusually tidy. When I turned my head to the right and peered into the living room, I couldn’t find a single photo on any table or bookcase.

  And the books themselves were reorganized by spine height.

  I gasped and ran down the hall to the basement stairs. When I left for school in August, only the boxes from Ian’s apartment remained. But when I switched on the light, the basement was full, boxes stacked six feet high bearing one of two labels: DONATE or SHIP.

  I bounded back up the stairs and into the kitchen. “What is going on around here?”

  Mum sighed, nodding toward the nearest chair. “Sit down, love. Everything is fine, but your father and I had to visit the emergency room a couple of times this fall –”

  “What?”

  “I told you, everything is fine. We just want to be extra cautious these days, and both times turned out to be false alarms.”

  “Well, that’s a relief, but it doesn’t explain the boxes in the basement.”

  “I know.” A sad smile crept into my dad’s face. “Listen, we’ve had a lot of time to reflect over these last nine months, especially since your brother…”

  He paused, gathering his composure. My dad had never been one to show any emotion besides cheerful affection or upbeat enthusiasm, but since my birthday, I’d caught him with tears in his eyes no fewer than fifty times. Maybe it was a side effect of his bypass surgery, but I had a feeling Ian’s death had broken my dad’s spirit in ways I’d never know.

  With a watery smile, he continued. “Your mum and I keep asking ourselves the same question, over and over again. Why are we here?”

  “Here on the planet?”

  “No, Meredith. Here.” Mum gestured around us. “The thing is, your father and I have lost the drive to bring Ireland to America when we could just as easily move home.”

  All these months, I’d been so focused on my own heartache that I’d barely given a thought to my parents. To dodge my ghosts, I’d switched up my class schedule and moved to the Treehouse. But Ian’s loss filled every space in Lincoln City
. Now that we’d survived our first Christmas without him, I could see there was nowhere to escape those memories.

  Not at Sullivan’s Restaurant.

  Not at the ocean.

  And definitely not at our white gabled house on Neptune Lane.

  “You’re moving back to Doolin?” I looked back and forth between them. “But you sold Nana’s cottage months ago.”

  “We did. But we never transferred the money to our account here. Time slipped away from us until one day, I got a call from Moira McCarthy. Do you remember Moira, love? She and her husband own the Juniper House.”

  “The bed and breakfast across the river from Fisherstreet?”

  “The very one,” my dad grinned. “You used to call it the luckiest house in Ireland.”

  “I remember. Their view is like a living postcard.”

  “Exactly.” Molly reopened the laptop and turned it to face me. Staring back at me was the enormous canary yellow house I’d always loved, so happily situated in the heart of Doolin town, just above the River Aille, down the hill from Doonagore Castle. Last summer, every time Pete and I had walked past it on our way over to the Cliffs of Moher, he’d threatened to run up the tiny hill to their deck just to get the perfect shot of the Fisherstreet shop fronts – all pink and purple and green below traditional thatched roofs.

  “The McCarthys are retiring and moving to Belfast to be near their daughter and her family,” Mum explained. “When Moira called, she only meant to tell us goodbye. She and your Nana were quite close.”

  “And if she’d called a week earlier, that might’ve been the extent of things,” Dad continued. “But you see, Tony had spoken to us only two days earlier about the possibility of forming a partnership with us. Three-way ownership with the intent to buy out our shares of the restaurant once we retire.”

  “Your manager, Tony?”

  “Yes, love,” Mum replied. “His responsibilities have only increased this past year with Jamie’s health so tenuous, and well, he’s got to make a living for his young family. So when Moira mentioned they intended to sell their inn, we spoke to Tony.”